Snubbed: Florida State and the College Football Playoff Controversy
College football has experienced a lot of drama over the past few week. The first weekend of December was Conference Championship weekend, where the top teams in every conference faced off against each other to be the last one standing at the top of their conference. For all the major Power 5 conferences – the ACC, SEC, Big-12, Big-10, and PAC-12 – there were major implications for the four-team Playoff for the national championship. There were seven teams in contention for the top four spots: the Georgia Bulldogs, Michigan Wolverines, Washington Huskies, Florida State Seminoles, Oregon Ducks, Texas Longhorns, and Alabama Crimson Tide – with them ranked in that order going into the weekend. In its final year of the four-team format, the race to the College Football Playoff was the most competitive it had ever been, with no team having anything more than one loss and four teams going into the weekend undefeated. As it usually does in the world of college football, chaos ensued. With Washington beating Oregon, Alabama beating Georgia, Texas winning, Michigan winning, and Florida State winning, the committee now had a difficult decision to make: three undefeated teams and three deserving one-loss teams vying for only four Playoff spots – meaning that two good teams would have to be passed on. Come the end of Conference Championship Weekend, the College Football Playoff Committee announced the four teams that would be participating: Michigan, Washington, Texas, and Alabama, meaning undefeated Florida State was snubbed out.
At least one school from the SEC has been in the Playoff ever since the inception of the four-team Playoff. This means that if a school were to win the SEC Championship, they would nearly be guaranteed a spot to compete. In the case of this year, that team was Alabama who – despite having a loss – had beaten Georgia to win the SEC. To add on top of that, the Crimson Tide has been a stalwart of college football, being in the Playoff seven of the past nine seasons – more than any other team – and won three of the six times they advanced to the National Championship in that span. On the other hand, Florida State was only in the Playoff once nearly ten years ago and has not been or won the National Championship in the Playoff Era of college football. Despite Alabama being the usual suspect in the Playoff, many argued that the Playoff Committee was acting almost hypocritically. For years, the committee has said that they look for the best teams from that season and chose those four best teams to compete for a chance at the National Championship. For the most part, this meant that if a team won their respective Power 5 conference and had no more than one or two losses, they were in. Despite matching both categories, – winning the ACC and being undefeated – the committee did not select Florida State somehow.
To say that the decision to leave Florida State Seminoles out of the College Football Playoff was met with extreme anger and devastation would be an understatement. As the committee was announcing their selections live on ESPN, they had live feeds on all the facilities of the respective candidates vying for those top spots – each filled with every player, coach, and staff member with their eyes glued to the television. When it was revealed that Florida State did not make it in, it was audible anger from the group. Mike Norvell, Florida State’s head coach, was visibly upset in a statement he released after the selection, saying how the selection by the committee “goes against everything that is true and right in college football,” and how his team that “found a way to win doing whatever it took on the field was cheated....” Seminoles star quarterback, Jordan Travis, among other various players even went to Twitter to share their devastation and disbelief over the committee’s decision.
Throughout the aftermath of the selection, the committee was trying to justify their decision through one main argument: quarterback Jordan Travis being injured and being out for the rest of the season with a brutal leg injury. Florida State was down to their third-string quarterback, Brock Glenn, after backup Tate Rodemaker was out, too, with a concussion. Despite the win, the Seminole passing offense was stunted by the injury during the ACC Championship, which contributed to one of the main arguments against letting Florida State in: their offense would struggle against other top teams in the Playoff. They were trying to avoid another huge talent gap in the Playoff like how they have had in years past – such as Georgia dominating TCU 65-7 in the National Championship just the season prior. However, the justification of Florida State missing their quarterback also was questionable, with Ohio State winning the first-ever Playoff with a third-string quarterback, too. How could it be that a formula that this committee had followed time and time again since 2014 could just have such a grave exception now?
It was nearly ten years ago when the College Football Playoff was established, in hopes of bringing in more parity to the sport – allowing the underdogs to finally get a shot at winning it all – in response to a flawed BCS system that only had the top two teams compete. However, despite these intentions, the four-team playoff has also had its downfalls since the beginning, with teams like 2014 TCU not being selected, despite being a one-loss Power 5 conference champion. One can hope that there will be more parity in the world of college football whenever the twelve-team Playoff format arrives next season, but after this season, some confidence might have been lost in the system and the committee. One can only hope that despite the rapidly changing landscape, the integrity of college football and its process of crowning a champion can remain intact; however, basing decisions off entertainment value or hypothetical game outcomes and not the four best teams is not a great way to be going.
